Catch 22

The other weekend I read Catch 22, it was one of the funniest books I've read. It also had a brilliant development of themes. One was the power and stupidity of bureaucracy. This is where the book gets its title, the main character Yossarian wants to escape military duty by being insane. You are insane if you choose to fly missions, and only need to ask to not fly but if you ask not to fly then you show you are aware of the danger and therefore not insane. Numerous other Catch 22's are used which strengthen this ideas of the absolute power of bureacacy. In line with this it is very much a 60s novel, being blatantly anti-war and anti-authority, though it probably distinguishes from this by lining its criticism also at world war 2.

Midnights Children and Never Let Me Go

You could probably couldn't read two more different books one after each other than Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro (my eng class text) and Midnights Children by Salman Rushdie. One is a massive book written in the magical realism style and has a political allegory. The other is a normal sized book which is chronicled through the memories and thoughts of it's main character. Yet like all antithesis's they have their similiarities.

Midnights Children is written through the eyes of Saleem Sinai who is telling his story to a group of women and is structured looking back at events at the past. The reliability of his story is deliberately put into question as he admits later he got the date of Gandhi's death wrong but later concludes "it happened that way because thats how it happened." This is tied also with Saleem being determined that he and his story will have meaning and thus he is careful to highlight the meanings and literal metaphors of life which are connecting his family with Indias larger history. This story is characterised by a change in tone often going from light hearted to serious and mixing self-glorification with self-depreciation.

Never Let Me Go is structurally similar to Midnights Children, being told through the eyes of Kathy H who is a clone in a boarding school for clones. The story takes us through her relations with other characters takes us through the different periods of her life. Unlike Midnights Children the story is deliberately told in dull bland prose and emphasised is the lack of meaning, lack of purpose and acceptance of it.

Read In Cold Blood by Capote

In Cold Blood was one of Capotes more famous books as it launched the genre of novelistic non-fiction. The book is written like a novel but is supposed to be all true, on the events leading up to and after the murder of the Clutter family by Perry Smith and Dick Hickock.

Maybe it's because I'm very interested in murder cases but I found it only mildly interesting. Capote shows good technical skills as a writer, but never quite knows where events in the book stand, is every thought Capote emits coming from characters heads as they go through events accurate? Almost impossible. If Capote has not taken artistic license he has god-like powers of making people remember places, events and thoughts in perfect photographic memory and getting a range of people to share them to him. Also other journalists suggest he made up passages and quotes to fit his story.

Coming Up For Air By George Orwell

I was going to write this with the clergyman's Daughter but for a blog post that turned into a super large monster so I decided to do this later and tried to keep it shorter as I have lots of work to do and could easily spend all my year writing my blog and reading books.

Anyway a Coming Up For Air takes the narrative view of Tom Bowling. A sometimes crude fellow who makes cipher for Orwells thoughts about the changes in Britain and the coming WWII. Orwell discusses the impact of WWI on peoples mindset saying its not that the past was necessarily better but in a sentimental way people had this innocence that everything would remain the same, life would always go on as usual. Secondly Orwell develops ideas on the unattainability of our, past using Tom having an urge to return to his home village and then finding his town is utterly eaten up by development and his idyllic fish pond has changed into a rubbish dump. Thus also complaining the best of britain was being destroyed by industrialisation. As always Orwell displays a very penetrating view of reality , which kind of like a scientist with a microscope helps us to discover many of the layers which make it up.

Read A Clergymans Daughter

A Clergymans Daughter is probably an under appreciated novel, perhaps hidden by the blinding strength of 1984. While Orwells really famous novels are political in nature this focuses with almost as much penetrating skill with more social aspects of society.

A Clergymans Daughter tells the story of Dorothy Haze the daughter of a rector of the local church who ruthlessly schedules her life to almost to the extent she's unconsciously or perhaps consciously a constant slave. Dorothy ends up losing her memory and goes on a number of adventures in different roles in the bottom and middle classes of society.

Orwell stuffs huge amounts of ideas into each episode of this novel. He uses her normal life as a rectors daughter to show village life and its how it functions with gossip, friendship and church also he uses it to introduce religion, the huge diversity in belief and show us Dorothys own. Later Dorothy works as Hop picker (Orwell himself worked this job) and showing how wages are systematically misused so the pickers get hardly anything, the sense of euphoria one gets for working all day and its influence on stopping critical thought (you're so tired). When Dorothy becomes a school teacher Orwell systematically shows how capitalism, private schools and silly parents all interact to give children a crap education that can't change. Finally when Dorothy talks to the village atheist Mr Warburton and goes home Orwell expresses concludes ideas about religion and servitude.

About religion, despite losing her faith Dorothy expresses what Daniel Dennett calls "belief in belief." That is Dorothy still believes religion is a good thing and wants other people to still believe, that religion gives purpose to life and this is contrasted with Warburton. But in the end we are shown Dorothy still does has a purpose, inspite of what she says, it is realised their is little difference inside the person between belief and non-belief as long as you have something to work towards, you have your purpose.

With servitude Orwell shows how forces systematically hold Dorothy in chains. In the hop fields she can only really work and get jobs by relying on Nobby her vagrant friend. As a school teacher she is bound to misery both by Mrs Creevy giving her piss poor wages and free time ensuring she is always working on something. Alternately Warburton offers to be her husband to an extent free her, yet she still would be relying on him and be with this ugly old man. So instead she has to work a kind of servitude with her father, doing church work she doesn't believe in.

Finished Letters to a Young Contrarian

Letters To A Young Contrarian had the authors tone but was different from the previous book of his I read. This book was based on Rilke's Letters To A Young Poet and Hitchens own letters to his students (he works as a professor on writing and literature etc). Part of his style is of quoting and refering to other people and works aiding him to explain his points, to some it may be burdensome and an acquired taste, but I find it enriching though it some it does make one feel I must read more.

For literature and general society one part letter which deserves analysis was about the necesssity of conflict. Hitchens points out that "in life we make progress by conflict and in mental life argument and disputation." But I would take that further and say without conflict, without working to improve with a little feedback and struggle people generally slide backwards. No conflict, argument or struggle usually means lazy acceptance of a position whatever it may be. In novels for any character to change and develop they need some kind of conflict forcing them to reflect on themselves and maybe adapt. Hitchens other point is about perpetual happiness or paradise, "imagine a state of bliss and perpetual happiness and harmony, and you have summoned a vision of tedium and pointlessness and predictability." We all know this is true on some level. Think of a novel which has no struggle, no excitement, the character is just happy all the time and you can't disagree it would be a very boring novel.

Read The Great Gatsby Novel

The novel of the Great Gatsby was excellent. The film was very true to the book, the only real difference being the book was able to expand on its characterization of Gatsby, Tom and Nick. Really interesting was the introduction which I've only half read which traces the influences of the novel. Also one of the important themes I previously forgot to mention was "the American dream."
This in the novel is represented by Gatsby and his rise from having only clothes on his back to becoming a millionaire and less to the letter of the dream but more to the spirit, is Gatsby transformation of his character, from James Gatz to the poised cool Jay Gatsby.